Saturday’s loss at Bournemouth was the latest disappointment in a season full of them for Liverpool. Can Arne Slot turn things around at Anfield before the campaign slips away?
On Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football this week, pundit Jamie Carragher stated his belief that Liverpool are “not suited to the Premier League.”
It was quite a claim to make about a team who won the title last season, but frankly, it was also hard to disagree.
“The real worry I have for Liverpool in terms of qualifying for the Champions League is the three big things that stand out in the Premier League now are set-pieces, counter-attacking football and coming up against low blocks,” Carragher said.
“Liverpool can’t cope with any of them. What we’re seeing is a team in the Premier League that’s not suited to the Premier League.”
Liverpool’s late 3-2 defeat at Bournemouth on Saturday exposed all three issues. They did claw their way back from 2-0 down despite struggling to create much from open play against a low block from Andoni Iraola’s side, although it wasn’t quite as persistently low as many of their opponents this season. But the hosts scored a stoppage-time winner after Liverpool were caught on the counter from their own corner, and then conceded from a resulting long throw.
Only Bournemouth themselves (17) have conceded more Premier League goals from non-penalty set-pieces than Liverpool (14) this season, while it was the fifth goal the champions had conceded from a throw-in, more than any other team in the league.
Bournemouth’s 95th-minute winner via Amine Adli was the latest example of another unwelcome trait for Liverpool; it was the third 90th-minute winning goal they had conceded in the Premier League this season.
After also losing games at Crystal Palace and Chelsea in second-half stoppage time, this is the first Premier League campaign in which Liverpool have conceded as many as three 90th-minute winners. In fact, prior to this season, they had only conceded two since the end of 2011-12 (vs Bournemouth in 2016-17 and vs Tottenham in 2023-24).
3 – Liverpool conceded a 90th-minute winning goal for the third time in the Premier League this season – their most ever in a single campaign in the competition. Heartache. pic.twitter.com/kMYgFpOZXy
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) January 24, 2026On top of that, there were last-minute equalisers conceded at Leeds United and Fulham in the last two months that cost Liverpool points, along with Harry Maguire scoring in the 84th minute in the 2-1 home defeat to Manchester United earlier this season. They also previously required a very late winner at Newcastle after allowing their 10-man hosts to equalise in the 88th minute on Matchday 2 of the Premier League season.
Particularly notable is that, of those six goals against, five came from set-pieces.
In total, Liverpool have conceded 10 goals from the 76th minute or later in league games this season, with only five teams allowing more. It’s already more than the nine they conceded in the whole of last season, showing that whether due to deploying ineffective tactics or simply suffering a mental block, or both, they are continuously vulnerable late in games. A world away from the ‘mentality monsters’ who used to terrify opponents in the closing stages.
Saturday’s disappointment ended Liverpool’s unbeaten run of 13 games in all competitions, albeit it was hardly the most inspiring undefeated streak, winning seven and drawing six.
It was difficult to say the late loss was harsh on Liverpool, either. Yes, they enjoyed more of the ball on the south coast (67%) and had more shots than their hosts (14-12), but Iraola’s team comfortably outscored their opponents on Opta-defined big chances – a chance from which the attacking team would reasonably be expected to score – by six to one.
Conceding three goals brought a lot of focus on the defence, and not without reason, but despite scoring twice, Liverpool’s attack were incredibly blunt at the Vitality Stadium.
Their only effort from within the width of the posts was Virgil van Dijk’s goal from a corner. They only had two shots in open play that weren’t blocked, as the below shot map shows. With Hugo Ekitiké starting on the bench and Alexander Isak out injured, Liverpool very much looked like a team missing a striker.
It was the latest in a long line of disappointing performances and results in a trying season, far removed from the joyous scenes of last May when they lifted the Premier League title. It feels like everything has been steadily declining since.
Liverpool did win their first five games of the season but were largely unconvincing in doing so. Since then, they have won just five of their 18 league games (D6 L7). That form extrapolated over a whole season would see them win just 44 points.
It is an extended run of poor form in the league, and even of those most recent five wins, they again weren’t all exactly convincing performances. Their 2-1 victory at Tottenham saw them clinging on against nine men in the closing stages, while their 2-1 home success over bottom-place Wolves also ended with the Kop covered in nervous sweat.
Looking at a Premier League table only including games since MD5, Liverpool are 12th, just four points above the relegation zone. They’ve won 22 points fewer than Aston Villa, despite having beaten them in this time, eight points fewer than Brentford, and even five points fewer than Everton.
While it might seem a bit unfair to ignore the first five games, that still accounts for almost half a season, and as mentioned, it’s not as if Liverpool played all that well in those initial victories. It felt even at the time like results might eventually catch up with their form, and that proved to be the case.
There was plenty of money spent on the squad last summer, too. Florian Wirtz, Ekitiké, Isak, Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez were all bought for big fees, and the assumption was that incorporating them was initially the main problem. However, there is an argument four of them are among Liverpool’s best-performing players at the moment, while Isak is out injured with a broken leg.
They did, though, also lose a lot of important players from their title-winning campaign, selling Trent Alexander-Arnold, Jarell Quansah, Luis Díaz and Darwin Núñez, while sending Kostas Tsimikas and Harvey Elliott out on loan. Those players accounted for a collective 223 appearances in all competitions last season, scoring 33 goals and producing 22 assists between them.
There was also the shocking death of Diogo Jota in July, which skews a lot of analysis about Liverpool this season. Beyond the numbers he added, the emotional impact of such a traumatic event cannot be measured. It is mercifully a very rare occurrence that a squad loses an active player in such devastating and sudden fashion, while grief is such a personal thing that you simply cannot assume what the knock-on effect is for a team. It would be sociopathic not to allow for plenty of empathy and understanding.
It may also seem slightly ridiculous for this much criticism to be aimed at a head coach who lifted the Premier League title in his first season at Anfield less than a year ago, but questions are being asked about whether Arne Slot is the right man to lead Liverpool long term.
There were doubters when the Dutchman replaced the iconic figure of Jürgen Klopp in the dugout, but to win the league in his first season, and to do so with relative ease, was a phenomenal achievement, and certainly not just something that could simply be credited to the squad Klopp left behind given they’d finished third the year prior.
It has been a very difficult second season for Slot at Liverpool, though, and their lowest point was probably in November. A terrible four days in which they lost by three clear goals at home twice to teams they had been heavy favourites against, first 3-0 by Nottingham Forest and 4-1 by PSV, and it caused Slot to go more defensive in his setup.
He believed his team had been too open in their play up to that point, and to at least stop a run that had seen them lose nine of their previous 12 games in all competitions, he changed to more cautious tactics.
To an extent, it worked. As well as enjoying a 1-0 win away at Inter in the Champions League, in the 10 matchdays in the Premier League between the Forest defeat and the Bournemouth loss, only Manchester United (179) attempted more shots than Liverpool (157), while only Arsenal (8) conceded fewer goals than the Reds (9). Only the Gunners (88) faced fewer shots than Slot’s men (94), while Liverpool had the lowest xG against in the division (8.7).
However, as we noted prior to the Forest game, Liverpool had a kind run of league fixtures coming up, and after being too open against the tougher teams earlier in the season, Slot decided to be more cautious just as his side were about to face, in theory, a series of weaker opponents. That led to a 13-game unbeaten run, but it also included underwhelming draws against Sunderland, Leeds (twice), Fulham and Burnley.
It’s difficult to argue with Carragher, or any other dissenting voice right now questioning whether the reigning Premier League title holders will even qualify for the Champions League next season. Liverpool are now winless in five league games (D4 L1), their longest run since January 2021 (also five), and sit in sixth place.
Their drop-off in several areas has been stark. After 23 games last season, they had conceded 21 goals, whereas they’ve already conceded 32 times in 2025-26. Only seven teams have conceded more, and they’ve allowed the same number of goals as Brentford and Fulham, and more than Spurs.
At the other end, they had scored 56 goals at this stage last season but have only 35 this term. That’s the same total as Brentford and fewer than Bournemouth (38), while they have accumulated a lower xG (36.4) than both the Bees (38.1) and the Cherries (36.6).
When looking at Liverpool’s rolling non-penalty xG since Slot arrived in the summer of 2024, you can see that there were significant periods last season when his team were able to create an awful lot more than they allowed. This campaign, however, they have struggled to make the difference big enough to ensure games aren’t almost constantly on a knife-edge. When they’ve been better in attack, they’ve been more open in defence, and when they’ve shored things up at the back, their threat at the other end has dipped.
Slot is still averaging 1.97 points per game in the Premier League; only Klopp (2.11) has a better average for the club in the competition. Though, of course, his outstanding first season is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there.
Liverpool’s good form in the Champions League also can’t be ignored, even though arguably their most embarrassing performance of the season came in that competition, a 4-1 thrashing at home by PSV, who might not even finish in the top 24 of the league phase.
A win over Qarabag on Wednesday will see Liverpool finish either third or fourth in the 36-team table, which would be very respectable, in a run that has already included victories over Real Madrid, Inter, Atlético Madrid and Marseille.
Liverpool still have plenty to play for this season. They remain in the FA Cup, have a very good chance of securing a last-16 place in the Champions League, and are in the race for qualifying for the competition next year via the league.
They cannot afford to keep being as poor as they have been, but the question now is whether Slot will be given time to turn it around and prove he is still the man who can lead Liverpool to further success, or whether a tough decision will need to be made sooner rather than later.
Carragher has got a point: Liverpool do look much softer in the Premier League than they do in Europe. But they have an undeniably strong squad, with a lot of players in it who were part of the best team in the division only last season. They just need to work out how to get back to being that machine domestically.
Carragher’s words may hurt Slot, but there is another former Reds player, recently out of work, who might be of greater concern to him if things don’t improve quickly.
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Five Wins in 18 Premier League Games: Liverpool Have Been Struggling for Almost Half a Season Opta Analyst.
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